Oh, I love that! In the oven, indeed! But I must say, when I saw the letter about Farrar, I was hoping it was going to be a confirmation of a new contract for more from the early days of the Met. Wait! I have an idea -- move the Met to San Francisco and imagine an alternate universe where opera found a center in the West and usurped the place of the film industry. Look, if Fforde can do it with literature, who says we can't imagine a world where opera became lingua franca.

Incidentally I got to thinking about Barbara's "Prima Donna" listening to the Met last week. On the quiz someone was telling, for the truth, a story about the accidental substitution of a loaded gun in the last scene of "Tosca" - and hastening to say that the tenor survived, although apparently injured, because when the soprano went to "wake" Mario, instead of singing, she turned and asked "Is there a doctor in the house?" which got a big laugh until she repeated it with, "no, I mean it!"

Unfotunately they rang the chimes and the story ended abruptly. I suspect it belongs in the same category as the trampoline.

I'm not sure Kay. In my first or second year of working on Jeopardy we did a category which included a clue about a famous tenor being injured that way during a performance. But I can't remember who it was. I'd have to delve into our database at work to see if I can find the clue. (Because we had to verify that it was true, of course.)